Azher Jirjees

Azher Jirjees is an Iraqi writer and novelist, born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1973. From 2003 onwards, he worked as a journalist in Iraq and published a number of articles and stories in local as well as wider Arab newspapers. In 2005, he wrote a satirical book about terrorist militias entitled Terrorism…Earthly Hell, after which he was forced to flee the country following an assassination attempt against him. He went to Syria, then Casablanca, and finally to Norway, where he now lives permanently. His published works include two short story collections, Above the Country of Blackness (2015) and The Sweetmaker (2017). His first novel, Sleeping in the Cherry Field (2019), was longlisted for the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and published in English by Banipal Books. His second novel, The Stone of Happiness (2022), was IPAF-shortlisted in 2023, and his third novel, The Valley of the Butterflies (2024) was shortlisted in 2025. Jirjees works as a literary editor and translator between Arabic and Norwegian.